Tuesday, September 09, 2008

For those who don't "get it"...

I was reading a little something by John Haidt today, writing about why liberals don't "get it" and what they can learn from Republicans. "[M]orality is not just about how we treat each other (as most liberals think); it is also about binding groups together, supporting essential institutions, and living in a sanctified and noble way."

If you're not as appalled by that as I, allow me to explain something to you and to Mr. Haidt.

If morality is about "binding groups together", how can you call Republicans moral when their specialty is divisiveness? Their great fallback position is always "God, guns, and gays": Liberals are against God, gonna take your guns, and make homosexuality in the mainstream. Republicans preach hate towards the least fortunate peoples: the poor, the immigrant, the homeless. They even preach hate towards veterans, denying them adequate medical care or GI benefits. Meanwhile, they claim that liberals - the group who has supported equal rights for all groups - don't get it.

If morality is about supporting essential institutions, how can you call Republicans moral when their strategy has famously been to undermine our most essential institutions: schools, health care, infrastructure. To see Republicans as moral, you would have to count the NRA as an essential institution. You'd have to include the hate-spreading Religious Right as an essential institution. You'd have to count the multinational job-exporters as essential institutions. You would, essentially, have to see reality through a myopic, diseased lens to consider the Republicans moral under that criteria.

If morality is about living in a sanctified and noble way, Mr. Haidt, then you Republicans would have to cast their vote for someone other than McCain or Palin. McCain was the "brains" behind the Keating Five. He refused to honor Martin Luther King. He denied benefits for veterans, the group which he is supposed to most empathize. Palin lies and lies and lies, about selling her plane on Ebay at a profit, about not wanting the Bridge to Nowhere, about stealing from the taxpayers of Alaska, and more still. Are these noble acts? Are these sanctified acts? No and No again. These are loathsome and low and unworthy of any definition of morality.